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Three Things in African Markets You Needed to Know Last Week – October 9

Here’s the rundown on last week’s episode of New Rules Africa. Check out the video for our deep dive into Africa’s stock exchanges: Link

Marriott Plans to Build 50 Hotels in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt by 2020 – Link

Marriott is putting both feet in Africa, where it projects to have its highest revenue growth through 2020. The company plans to build 50 hotels in Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt – 10,000 hotel rooms apiece.

That isn’t the end. Within the next 14 months, the company is opening nine hotels in Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa – 1,300 hotel rooms.

The company bought Protea Hospitality Holdings for $200M in April as part of its expansion across Africa. It is interesting that the company is taking both an organic and acquisition approach to growth on the continent.

Ghana concluded those meetings last week, and walked away with a pretty grim outlook on the country. It may see its lowest growth levels in the past decade, with GDP growth dropping to 4.5 percent from its 7.1 percent growth for 2014. Compare this to the country’s double digit growth levels in the few years following the discovery of the Jubilee Oil Fields. The struggle the country is facing includes:

Low revenue

High government employee wages on aggregate

Rising cost of paying off debt

Struggling currency – dropped 30 percent to the dollar this year

High inflation – average of 15 percent for the year

It’s a tough situation and hopefully, the country will see it’s way out of this sooner rather than later. President Mahama spoke at a conference I attended a few weeks ago, and while he spoke relatively frankly about the country’s challenges, and the runway for improvement being a potentially long one, he remained hopeful in his comments. The two sides continue talks this week during the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings.

Mo Ibrahim, since 2006, has taken on the task of ensuring that Africa’s governments operate for the people, by the people. The mobile phone pioneer’s Mo Ibrahim Foundation released its latest annual index that ranks the continent’s governments based on a comprehensive set of criteria covering participation and human rights, human development, sustainable economic opportunity, and safety and rule of law.

Here are the highlights:

Governance improved on the aggregate slightly over the last five years;

The primary drivers of improvements were in participation and human rights, and human development categories. Economic opportunity and human development used to drive the improvement;